


Grampa Frank

by Lenny9987



Series: Lenny's Imagine Claire and Jamie Prompts [49]
Category: Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-24
Updated: 2018-11-24
Packaged: 2019-08-26 09:52:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16679353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lenny9987/pseuds/Lenny9987
Summary: Prompt: Frank didn’t die, but he and Claire divorced. When the Mackenzies return to the future, Jemmy gets to know his other grandfather. It makes for an interesting return to the past.





	Grampa Frank

Frank stood with his arms crossed as he examined the scene before him. Jemmy was sitting at the window, staring out at the street. He was leaning forward on the windowsill, his chin resting on his arms. Rain trickled down the glass and pattered lightly against the leaves on the bush just outside. 

The boy had been sitting there since Brianna and Roger had left with Mandy that morning to go to the hospital. So far there had been one call to the house from Roger informing Frank that they had arrived and that Brianna was helping keep the baby calm through pre op—and that Joe was helping to keep Brianna calm. Frank insisted that he had things under control with Jemmy and it was true—there had been no tantrums or trouble so far. 

But that was part of what Frank found unsettling. It was impossible to look at the boy and not be reminded of Brianna at the same age—that hair, those eyes, even the same freckles sprinkled across their noses. But Brianna had been boisterous and never seemed to stop talking. From the way Brianna and Roger spoke about their son, Frank had the impression he usually behaved the same way. 

And yet, there he sat at the window, silently watching traffic and the rain. Was it simply a combination of the novelty and concern for his sister? Or was it  _ him _ ? 

After all, Claire might not have chosen to leave him when she had her first little adventure with the stones at Craigh na Dun but when she’d returned, she had no qualms about making sure Frank knew he was no longer her first choice… in anything. It had taken him years to give up that fight and agree to a divorce. He knew when he’d found record of Jamie Fraser alive after Culloden that it wouldn’t take Claire long to go back to him… and that he would still have Brianna to care for. 

But then Brianna had followed her mother only a few years later, leaving him behind to chase after a stranger. Oh, he knew it wasn’t to do with him, really—she’d gone out of her way to make that point many times in the weeks before she went. And yet, even when Roger went to find her and bring her back, months after Brianna had hoped to return by… 

They’d all stayed. They’d all chosen to live a life in a more dangerous time and place… and all he could do was search for them in his research. The only reason they’d come back at all was because of medical necessity. 

“Are you hungry at all?” Frank asked the boy. “Is there anything you would like to do? I want to stay at the house for when your parents call with an update, but I can pull out some of the old board games and puzzles from when your mother was younger.”

“Grandda was ‘sposed to teach me to play chess,” Jemmy said, his tone flat, hollow. He lifted his head to look at Frank. “He was helpin’ me carve my own set of pieces and tellin’ me about what they do. He said makin’ it that way would make sure I had the patience ye need to play and when we had ‘em all, he was goin’ to show me.”

“Perhaps never having done so is the reason I’ve never had patience for chess,” Frank said with a chuckle. “I did teach your mother to play checkers when she was about your age. The board we played with is in the attic with some of her other toys and games. Would you care to come see?” 

Jemmy shrugged but got up from the seat near the window and followed Frank up to the second floor and was first up the ladder to the small crawl space that served as the house’s attic. 

“Do you see that box over there?” Frank asked, remaining on the ladder himself and only sticking his upper torso into the dim space. He shone a flashlight at a box. “Can you read what it says?”

“‘Bree’s Room’?” Jemmy responded with little confidence given the poor lighting and worn lettering. 

“Very good. Do you think you can crawl over to it and push it towards me?”

Jemmy scrambled around, Frank guiding him with the flashlight but before he could move the box more than a few inches across the dusty floor, he spotted something of even greater interest.

“Claire!” he exclaimed. “That’s Grannie’s name!” He darted over to the smaller box and pushed that one toward Frank instead. “Can I see wha’s in here?”

It was the most animated Frank had seen the boy so he swallowed his reluctance and pulled the box down before holding the ladder steady for Jemmy to descend. 

Jemmy didn’t even bother dusting himself off or carrying the box to a more convenient space. He plopped down in the middle of the hallway floor and pawed at the box to get it open. Frank set the flashlight aside and showed Jemmy the proper way to open the cardboard box, then he sat on the floor himself, leaning against the wall with his legs stretched to the other wall and watched his grandson.

Claire had taken most of her things when they divorced—her medical school texts and notebooks, the silver service set her uncle had given them as a wedding gift, random mementos picked up from a lifetime of traveling to dig sites… But she’d left a number of photographs behind. Many of them had been family shots or photos of the pair of them. Frank had been tempted to throw them away but when it came down to it, he hadn’t the heart. So instead, he’d stuffed them in a box and tucked them away in the crawl space where he didn’t have to look at them and be reminded. 

“That’s you and Grannie,” Jemmy remarked, his brow furrowing with confusion and amazement.

“I suppose you’d hardly recognize her from those,” Frank mused, reaching to pick up the photos Jemmy had let fall as he moved to the next and the next. 

“She… she was  _ young _ ,” the boy gawked. “She doesna even look so old as  _ Mam _ does.”

Frank peeked. It was a photo of Claire he’d taken during one of their all-too-brief leaves together during the war. She looked both relieved and exhausted, her hair a curly mess but her smile as bright as he remembered and warmth in her eyes that was a punch to the gut. 

“This is Grannie wi’ you and Mam,” Jemmy said with excitement, holding out a photo taken at a Christmas party one of his colleagues threw every year. Brianna wore a green plaid dress with a bow in her hair while Claire dazzled in white (her smile was obviously strained but Frank was pretty sure it was the result of the Dean having said about her wasting time and money pursuing her medical degree rather than anything he’d said or done) and Frank wore a red jumper with his jacket draped over his arm so it would show brightly in the photo.

“Who’s…  _ that _ ?” Jemmy asked, baffled.

“That… is Mickey Mouse. That was taken when we took your mother to Disneyland,” Frank explained. They’d taken the trip after he and Claire had decided that divorce was the only option left. They wanted one final family holiday for Brianna before they formally started the process and told her. Perhaps it was having acknowledged that they were giving up on the marriage, but so much of the tension he and Claire felt with one another seemed to vanish. They were able to laugh and joke and enjoy themselves with an abandon they hadn’t been able to conjure while they’d been so focused on trying to make things work between them. It was easily the happiest family vacation they had ever taken together, a lovely memory amid the sea of disquiet that gave way to a sometimes-difficult balancing act.

For it was about two months after they returned from that trip that Claire rented a house close enough to keep Brianna in the same school so she could go back and forth between them as often as necessary—Claire’s schedule frequently included overnight shifts, for which Frank was grateful. 

“Mickey Mouse?!” Jemmy bounced from his bottom onto his knees in a maneuver that caused Frank’s joints to twinge in sympathy. “But we hafta go see him! Grandda asked me to pass along his regards. I didna ken Mam  _ knew _ him.”

“Your other grandfather knows about Mickey Mouse?” Frank asked, the impulse to laugh rising in his chest. 

“Aye. He said if I was ever to come ‘cross him I was to give him Grandda’s regards,” Jemmy repeated. “Can we go to see him? How far away is Disneyland? Can we take the vroom to get there?”

The chuckle escaped but Jemmy didn’t seem to notice. Frank wondered whether it was Claire or Brianna who had told Jamie about Disneyland and what an 18th century man made of a cartoon mouse that sang and danced and was brought to life at a theme park. 

“Disneyland is all the way on the other side of the country so it would be faster to fly there than to drive,” Frank began to tell a rapt Jemmy. “We’ll need to see what your parents say after your sister is recovered, but I should very much like to take you there to meet Mickey Mouse.”


End file.
